The "magic box" is a very blatant reference to The Third Policeman, a novel by Flann O'Brien that Damon Lintelof has mentioned as being one of the inspirations for Lost. In the novel, it is a magic subterranean chamber that gives you anything you dream of, but the catch is that you cannot remove it from the chamber.

Totally! I picked up on that as well, I too made a topic on it, maybe mods will merge these...

http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=73158

Oops! Sorry. . .I didn't catch the "Eternity" reference in the thread header.

Nice catch, Capt. Cook. ;) Unfortunately, unless people have read The Third Policeman, they won't catch the reference in that Eternity thread. Thanks for posting it with the actual book title. And thanks for posting the link to the other thread, atom. I probably wouldn't have caught it otherwise (after reading some of the posts over there, it doesn't seem like people enjoyed the book all that much :().




If any of the mods merge them, can they please add The Third Policeman to the title?

luckily.TPTB ve stated that this whole box thing is only metaphorically spoken and theres no gigantic hidden box anyplace near!thats a relief!

Here's a funny thing: I got 'Third Policeman' from the stain on the ceiling of the room where Sayid was interogated in # Enter 77.